conceit

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

conceit, in literature, fanciful or unusual image in which apparently dissimilar things are shown to have a relationship. The Elizabethan poets were fond of Petrarchan conceits, which were conventional comparisons, imitated from the love songs of Petrarch, in which the beloved was compared to a flower, a garden, or the like. The device was also used by the metaphysical poets, who fashioned conceits that were witty, complex, intellectual, and often startling, e.g., John Donne's comparison of two souls with two bullets in
"The Dissolution."
Samuel Johnson disapproved of such strained metaphors, declaring that in the conceit
"the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together."
Such modern poets as Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot have used conceits.

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conceit

con·ceit
/ kənˈsēt/
•
n.
1.
excessive pride in oneself.
2.
. a fanciful expression in writing or speech; an elaborate metaphor:
the idea of the wind's singing is a prime romantic conceit. ∎
an artistic effect or device:
the director's brilliant conceit was to film this tale in black and white. ∎
a fanciful notion:
he is alarmed by the widespread conceit that he spent most of the 1980s drunk.

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